Australia’s biggest property bargain? – Published 13 February 2015

Price of Perth beachfront mansion cut in half from $50 million.

The asking price for Tukurua, a sprawling estate in Cottesloe, Perth, has been cut in half. The beachfront mansion was on the market for $50 million but its owner Ted Smith has decided to switch agents and slash the price to $25 million.

Tukurua was built in 1896 as the summer residence of Western Australia’s first attorney-general, Sir Septimus Burt. In 1933, one of the Burt children rented the property to Mr and Mrs Berry Cass, who established a successful bed-and-breakfast there and made sufficient profit to buy the property in 1939. Their daughter, Dorothea Cass, was one of the first women to graduate from the University of Western Australia and worked as a journalist and radio programmer. She inherited Tukurua and, on her death in 1994, left it to her friend of many decades Ted Smith.

Smith was Cass’ live-in gardener. When he inherited the home in 1994, it was valued at $4 million. He has spent $5 million renovating the house over the past six years and is ready to move on to something a bit smaller.